It Takes You Away
Story 285, Episode 849, Series 11 Episode 9
Doctor: The Thirteenth Doctor
Companions: Ryan Sinclair, Yasmin Khan, Graham O’Brien
Doctor Who goes to the mountains of Norway during ‘winter’, and we get a weird result.
The Review
The TARDIS crew meets a blind girl, Hanna, hiding alone in a padlocked cabin deep in Norway. Outside is the Thing, a roaring beast that had abducted her father. Inside, is a mirror, and this mirror is actually a portal to a dark cave area known as the ‘Anti-Zone’. Ryan stays with Hanna to hold out against the Thing as the rest go in to try and find her father Eric. We meet this weird alien Ribbons who it never explained how the heck he got there, and he gets shredded by some flesh-eating moths. The Anti-Zone connects to another world where Eric is there with his dead wife, and Graham sees Grace again. The Doctor realizes this is the ancient Solitract, a conscious universe exiled from the universe for being fundamentally incompatible trying to get some friends. She convinces everybody the Solitract is lying and they head home.
I’m not quite sure what the exact moral of this story is. On one hand, it’s that we have to move on from grief and enjoy the company of the people that are still here. Ryan finally calls Graham ‘granddad’, which helps him recover from painfully having to reject false Grace. Eric agrees to take Hanne back to civilization in Oslo. Now, see, there’s no way around this, the Solitract appears a talking frog to the Doctor. It might work, but the CGI for the frog is just not there to make it seem like it’s actually speaking words. Apart from more Susan hype, the Solitract has to keep being amazing…without people. (The Thing was a ploy from Eric to stop Hanne from wandering off). In the end, it is overall a sort of positive and uplifting message, I’m just not sure in what direction. That frog though…talk about divisive.
Next up is the finale, in which I have no idea what is going to happen. Series 11…lots of weird.
8/10 It was sufficiently weird, I guess?
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 